The Government Accountability Office (GAO), the federal agency providing management and fiscal reviews of federal agency operations, released on January 28 a report titled,
“Critical Vaccine Distribution, Supply Chain, Program Integrity, and Other Challenges Require Focused Federal Attention.” GAO’s report states that “Diagnostic testing for COVID-19 is critical to controlling the spread of the virus.”
In assessing the government’s handling of the pandemic, the GAO reported that “the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has not issued a comprehensive and publicly available national testing strategy.” The GAO report echoes similar concerns that prompted ASCP to re-issue in mid-January its call for the federal government to develop a comprehensive, national testing strategy. For more on ASCP's recommendations, click
here.
The GAO’s report noted that some of HHS’s COVID-19 strategy documents have not been made public. While the national testing strategy is formally outlined in a publicly available document, HHS has only provided Congress with its COVID-19 Testing Strategy Reports, which detail the implementation of the Trump Administration’s testing strategy. Stakeholders who are involved in the response efforts told the GAO that they were unaware of the existence of a national strategy, or did not have a clear understanding of the strategy. Without a comprehensive, publicly available national strategy, the GAO stated that HHS is at risk of key stakeholders and the public lacking crucial information to support an informed and coordinated testing response. The GAO also reported, “As of January 2021, 27 of GAO’s 31 previous recommendations remained unimplemented.” Click
here for information on President Biden’s new national COVID-19 strategy.
Click
here to access the GAO report.
Click
here to read the ePolicy story on President Biden's National COVID-19 strategy.
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ASCP ePolicy News is supported by an unrestricted grant from Hologic.
